Is humanity suicidal?
Credit: Frank Lindner/COSMOS
Imagine that on an icy moon of Jupiter – say Ganymede – the space station of an alien civilisation is concealed. For millions of years its scientists have closely watched the Earth.
Because their law prevents settlement on a living planet, they have tracked the surface by means of satellites equipped with sophisticated sensors, mapping the spread of large assemblages of organisms, from forests, grasslands and tundras to coral reefs and the vast planktonic meadows of the sea.
They have recorded millennial cycles in the climate, interrupted by the advance and retreat of glaciers and scattershot volcanic eruptions. The watchers have been waiting for what might be called the Moment.
When it comes, occupying only a few centuries and thus a mere tick in geological time, the forests shrink back to less than half their original cover. Atmospheric carbon dioxide rises to the highest level in 100,000 years.
The ozone layer of the stratosphere thins, and holes open at the poles. Plumes of nitrous oxide and other toxins rise from fires in South America and Africa, collect in the upper troposphere and drift eastward across the oceans.
At night the land surface brightens with millions of pinpoints of light, which coalesce into blazing swathes across Europe, Japan and eastern North America. A semi-circle of fire spreads from gas flares around the Persian Gulf.
It was all but inevitable, the watchers might tell us if we met them, that from the great diversity of large animals, one species or another would eventually gain intelligent control of Earth.
That role has fallen to Homo sapiens, a primate risen in Africa from a lineage that split away from the chimpanzee line five to eight million years ago.
Unlike any creature that lived before, humans have become a geophysical force, swiftly changing the atmosphere and climate as well as the composition of the world's fauna and flora.
Now in the midst of a population explosion, this species has doubled in number to more than 6 billion during the past 50 years. It is scheduled to double again in the next 50 years. No other single species in evolutionary history has even remotely approached the sheer mass in protoplasm generated by humanity.
Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many of our scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign form of animal made the breakthrough.
Our species retains hereditary traits that add greatly to our destructive impact. We are tribal and aggressively territorial, intent on private space beyond minimal requirements and oriented by selfish sexual and reproductive drives. Cooperation beyond the family and tribal levels comes hard. Worse, our liking for meat causes us to use the Sun's energy at low efficiency.
A brave new world
People are basically spiritually blind, and also have limited vision for the future implications of their behaviours, similar to animals. Being able to see the picture as a whole, of the Earth, its inhabitants, is only possible for a vew visionaries and they are usually labeled as "extremists". We are an inbuilt time-bomb, self-destructive and totally species-centric in outlook. Unless we consume less, reduce our population drastically and live without producing greenhouse gases we will destroy our own ecology and non-human creatures with us! We need to become more humble, move down the food pyramid, less numerous and more perceptive of mother-nature.
Milly Osborne
Extinctions
Edward O. Wilson has been making the same claim about extinctions for twenty years now. By his figures, we should have seen over 300 bird and animal extinctions already.
How many have we seen?
None.
At some point, he'll notice that ... but not yet, apparently.
If the extinctions are happening ... where is the evidence?
w.
Extinctions are happening
The evidence of animals going extinct isn't something on paper, Humans are the ones who protect these endangered species and destroy them. If it wasn't for a small population of people trying to protect these species then animals like the green sea turtle, Panda Bears or even the blue whale would already be wiped from existence.
fate
There can be virtually no doubt that something will "take care of us" in the future, whether natural disaster (my vote is for volcanic activity; a sizeable meteor strike is another offering) or by our own hand (large scale war, nuclear or otherwise), maybe even an unstoppable disease. I don't mean the extripation of H. sapiens necessarily, just enough fire power to knock us down to size. The question is, what will our world look like when this inevitable event occurs? Maybe a massive disaster will be a welcome relief by then.
I fear that sentient, humanist scientists like Dr Wilson are the Cassandras of our time. Intellect and insight, and ample evidence to build careful cases in favor of conserving the environment are no match for planetary mob rule, nor a match for the political corruption that is the cause of so much human and environmental suffering. A slight dip, or a major dive, in the world economy (another inevitability) will place environmental goals even further out of reach and accelerate destruction.
Regarding Nature I would like to add that it is in our best interest to advance the idea that "saving species" and "protecting nature" is *primarily* a selfish, anthropocentric activity, and a very important one. Nature can take care of herself and evolve new life forms and ecosystems for a long, long time. We are battling against the excesses and greed, and just plain living, of our fellow man so that we may always appreciate the natural world we know, or think we know, in all its diversity and splendor.
please keep in mind that
please keep in mind that your anthropocentric idea is very much western in origin...
and why are we looking at the history of capitalism as an unsustainable economic model... this protection of nature and selfishness and greed comes very much out of creation of personal property.
Humankind Suicidal? Yes.
The question: Is Humankind Suicidal is answered with a resounding "Yes!"
It is a pity that humans have destroyed so much of Nature without a clue as to what was being destroyed. Among the species which are counted as victims of humankind's reckless destructiveness: Homo sapiens.
Humankind is already suffering from a self-inflicted lethal wound. The damage that we have already done is sufficient to destroy humankind's future. The damage that humankind will accomplish over the next century will certainly push our species over the cliff to extinction.
Too bad for humankind. This story does have a happy ending: Nature will erase all memories of humankind's existence from the surface of the Earth over the next million years & repair all of the damage to the biosphere over the next ten million years.
Nature will survive the human plague. God bless Nature!
Man is irrational animal.
What may man can boast,he is by nature irrational.He is selfish. This selfishness and irrational nature can proceed to suicide.When man invented science he behave just like Don Qutoz.Science provided him great weapon.Ancient people had very poor weapon, so they could not destroyed more nature, when science developed man used it for his selfishness than selflessly for mankind.
About the Author
What a blow hard! It took 10,000 words to say in summary: "No, but we need to change... " Geez! Can I have back my 15 minutes? I want a refund!
Are we the world's most dangerous species?
We tend to think we are the world's most successful species, not the most dangerous, but I suspect the 21st Century may provide the answer once and for all. Certainly, it's up to us. It's a serious mistake to think that we can continue to exist whilst overseeing a major species extinction - at what point will it become too late to stop it. We are gambling with time.
In a blog (http://journeymanphilosopher.blogspot.com/2007/09/living-in-21st-century.html) I quote similar sentiments from William Laurance, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama.
I've been a subscriber to COSMOS from its inception - it's an excellent magazine. I wonder how many politicians read it, or do they find the truth too alarmist to contemplate.
Visit my blog: www.journeymanphilosopher.blogspot.com
Can we?
Can we please put all these comments in the context of western capatalist society? Humans as greedy and selfish by nature... thats a product of the western tradition...
Im just saying, there are other socio/economic paradigms throught history and we need to understand the philisophical and psychological roots of the problem we are dealing with if you agree that reforming our society is the key to "saving" planet earth.